Coroner's Jury Duty

In early 2005, I received a letter in the mail from the Champaign
County Clerk's office informing me that I had been selected for
Coroner's Jury Duty. I didn't really have any idea what Coroner's
Jury duty actually was. A lady that I work with had received a
similar letter a year or two earlier, but she didn't end up actually
having to serve. Also, web searching for Coroner's Juries didn't
return many results.
Apparently this is a rather anachronistic
tradition. Most places no longer use Coroner's Juries; but
Champaign County, Illinois definitely does.

The letter had a scheduled date for orientation, and said that we
had to rank three months to serve in order of preference: March,
April, and May.

Orientation for the jury duty was scheduled for February 14th, 2005.
I had thought that I might be out of town that week, so I had
mailed my orientation
letter back in with my preferred months. I
expected to be getting busy with work as Spring wore on, so I chose
March, April, and May, in that order. I knew that I had a meeting
at work scheduled for May, so I wanted to stay as far away from that
as I could.

As it turned out, I wasn't out of town on February 14, so I went to
orientation. At orientation, there were 21 people there.
The jury meets
once per month; typically on the third Thursday. Further, I had learned
the dates of the May meeting, so it actually worked out that May was
the best month for me. Each jury sits with 7 members. 6 actual jurors,
and 1 alternate. So, with the 21 people that were there, every single
person was put on a jury. I ended up with May.

The purpose of the coroner's inquest (which is the formal meeting where the
jury makes their decisions) is to determine the manner of
death. The manner of death is the fashion that brought about the cause
of death. Cause of death (COD for all of you CSI: fans) is predetermined
and that information
is given to the jury. The possible manners of
death include:

Natural Causes

Accidental Death: A death resulting from an accident or injury not
intentionally caused by the deceased or by another.

Suicidal Death: A death resulting from the intent by the deceased to
terminate his own life by any means.

Homicidal Death: A death that results from an accident or injury when:

The injury was intentionally caused by another person to the
deceased or,

A person acts in such a willful and wanton (reckless) disregard for
life that his/her actions are likely to cause death. (Manslaughter;
Reckless Homicide). Reckless Homicide often includes the driving of a
vehicle that causes a fatality while under the influence of alcohol or drugs.

Undetermined Death; If evidence as to the manner of death is unclear,
or jurors cannot unanimously agree on a verdict.

For natural causes, the coroner can make the determination. For anything
that isn't a natural cause, it has to go to a coroner's inquest and a jury
of one's peers must make the determination.
If a death occurs where natural
causes is questionable, it will still go to the jury. Or at least we
have to trust that it will.

During orientation, the coroner, Duane Northrup, took various questions. He
noted that the deliberation room is close to the room where the inquest is
held, and that, as jurors, we should be wary of loud laughing, etc., as the
family can be at the inquest (and might get the wrong idea if they hear
laughing). In fact, the inquest
is open to the public.
Generally a reporter from the newspaper might be there, and, if a popular
death, there might TV cameras, etc. Also, the jurors were able to ask
questions of the people on the stand. This is one of the things that
really made it different than a regular court room jury in my mind.

Fast forward to May 19

I had to be at the location at 8:00am. It was raining, people were driving
slow, and I ended up getting there at about 7:59. Plenty of time to
spare.

Once the coroner got there, he went over a few of the rules with us. The
room was probably 20 foot by 40 foot and had a couple of those 6 foot folding
tables at the front. A single folding table was off to the side for the
jurors and there were about 30 chairs for the audience. There were nine
cases for the day, scheduled approximately 20 minutes apart. Apparently
on some days there were 15 or 20 cases.

A jury foreman was chosen, and the six people sitting on the sides of the
table were true jurors, and the person sitting on the end was the
designated alternate. We had the option of switching among the jurors
so that the alternate could sit on some of the cases. For our jury,
we had a person that had an emergency, and the coroner had called in
an individual that had sit on previous juries. This individual ended
up being the alternate for several of the cases, because they had
knowledge of the death. The two main reasons for having an alternate
were: 1) someone gets sick, or 2) a person on the jury knows the deceased
or family members and might not be impartial. The alternate couldn't
ask questions, and didn't go into the deliberation room. For all of the
cases, the coroner holding the inquest could ask questions.